I was super excited when the OPPO Find N2 Flip got launched in the country and finally landed on my review desk. This is the company’s first try at the clamshell format and the smartphone does more right and gets so close to upstaging its biggest rival, the Samsung Z Flip4.
It’s a tight race in this clamshell-style as they are now more market-ready alternatives than before. In Kenya, we have the Z Flip4 and the yet-to-be-launched Z Flip5 and TECNO’s Phantom V Flip.
The OPPO Find N2 Flip accompanies the bookstyle format of the Find N2. The latter is only available within the China borders but we’ll get its successor, the Find N3 which launches later this year. It’ll be available in the country as well.
After spending two weeks with the Find N2 Flip, here’s what OPPO got right and wrong. I’ll add context in comparison to other clamshell foldables in this review.
UNBOXING
The N2 Flip comes in a nice-looking white and grey box with OPPOx Hasselblad branding. It opens in a kinetic design that lifts up the phone mimicking the flip foldable style.
Besides the phone, you get the 67W adapter, a USB-A-to-C cable, a safety guide, a quick guide, OPPO premium service card and two halves of snap-on hard plastic cases.
Overall, I liked the unboxing experience and all the accessories you get inside.
DESIGN
Find N2 Flip comes in two colours – glossy Moonlit Purple or Astral Black(our unit) which has a frosted antiglare finish.
The two halves fold completely flush courtesy of the New Generation Flexion Hinge.
N2 Flip comes with a plastic back and aluminium frame. At the bottom, we get the charging port, the primary microphone, dual nano-sim card slots and the bottom-facing speaker. We have a secondary microphone and the earpiece functions as a secondary speaker for a stereo setup.
To the side, we have a power button embedded with a fingerprint reader and slightly above are the volume rockers.
The inner display is a 6.8-inch AMOLED screen with 120Hz refresh rate and peak brightness of 1600 nits. This is the brightest display in the foldable space – brighter than the Samsung Z Fold4 and second to its sibling, the Find N2 Fold.
The crease is also hard to notice.
The cover screen is a 3.26″ AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass 5 protection. It’s stuck at 60Hz with brightness peaking at 800 nits. It’s a relatively bigger outer screen in comparison to the 1.9 inch of the Z Flip4. But this will change when Samsung announces the Z Flip5 which will reportedly have a bigger cover screen at 3.4 inches.
It’s worth noting that there’s no ingress protection with the N2 Flip – it has no official water and dust resistance rating
The screen is a solid canvas for all multimedia needs – from scrolling the web and social media to binge-watching tv shows and movies. The screen supports HDR10+ – you’ll get HDR streams from platforms like Netflix, Amazon Video and YouTube.
The cover display is useful too but like other flip phones, it is still limited – only the Razr+ efficiently takes advantage of the large real estate its outer screen offers.
The outer screen of the N2 Flip supports Always-on Display and waking the phone presents you with interactive pets as part of its customisation. You have five different animals doing different things each time you wake up the phone which is a fun thing. You can also change the multiple clock styles.
The cover screen lets you check notifications and access quick settings toggle. You get access to some widgets including some camera modes such as portrait, photo and video, weather widget, events, timer, Spotify now playing, WhatsApp and TikTok.
To reply to messages including WhatsApp, you’ll need to unfold the phone to use the keyboard. TikTok was the only app I could fully open to watch videos. There’s a foldable features submenu you can access to see which widgets to add to the cover screen.
The outer screen comes in handy when taking photos and vides as you can use the main camera for selfies using the display for live previews. Even when unfolded, your subjects can see themselves on the cover display when you’re taking videos or photos of them – so no more bad shots. The camera interface allows you to enable a screen preview shortcut for the cover display.
OPPO says that the water drop hinge has been tested with over 400,000 folds and it can flex either at a 110-degree angle or 45-degree angle for hands-free selfies and regular photos.
The hinge allows the N2 Flip to become its own tripod for taking shots as well as using it in a camcorder style.
I really like this format factor as it’s convenient and the phone being compact means easy pocketability.
Its big and bright screen gives an edge over other flip foldables. I would have loved it if you could do more on the cover screen and hopefully, the Find N3 Flip will add more widgets and allow more apps to be accessible on it.
PERFORMANCE
Besides looking good on the outside, the N2 Flip brings the power as well. It comes powered by MediaTek’s top chipset – the Dimensity 9000+ (4 nm) processor paired with Mali-G710 MC10 GPU. You get 8GB of onboard RAM and up to 8GB of virtual RAM courtesy of ColorOS 13. The phone ships with 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage.
The N2 Flip runs on Android 13 and OPPO has promised 4 years of major Android OS updates and 5 years of security patches.
Overall performance was solid during my time with the phone – it handled whatever task I threw at it and I’m a power user so light and moderate tasks will be a smooth ride with the phone. Heavy multitasking and gaming will be a breeze with this phone.
That high refresh rate and bright screen made interacting with the phone really delightful.
ColorOS continues to be my favourite user interface with multiple customisation features.
I enjoyed the consistent performance of the N2 Flip.
BATTERY LIFE
Find N2 Flip comes with a 4300mAh battery with 44W SuperVOOC charging with the included 67W adapter. It is bigger and the faster charging gets it ahead of its rivals.
In under 25 minutes, you can go from empty to 50%.
It has an all-day battery life even with heavy use. I was pushing up to 7 and a half hours of screen-on time. The bigger battery gives it an edge over other flip smartphones. Only the Vivo X Flip tops this list with the N2 Flip coming in close second.
No more battery anxiety with the Find N2 Flip.
CAMERAS
OPPO put three cameras on the Find N2 Flip – a 32MP selfie camera(Sony IMX 709 sensor) and a dual setup at the back. We have a 50MP main(Sony IMX 890 sensor) and an 8MP ultrawide(Sony IMX 355 sensor).
The main camera shoots video recording is capped at 4K 30fps while the front-facing caps at 1080p 30fps.
The Find N2 Flip is an incredible camera smartphone with multiple modes to choose from. Besides the regular modes, you get exclusive Hasselblad features like the Pro mode with the H icon, X Pan and Natural Colour Calibration.
The X Pan mode lets you take vintage-style pictures for portraits, landscape and architecture shots.
Regular shots even those taken in lowlight came out amazing. The cameras take well-detailed, well-exposed, sharp and vivid shots. The dynamic range and white balance are excellent. There’s great background separation for portraits and autofocusing and face-tracking capabilities are really good, especially for hands-free selfies and videos.
My only gripe is that there’s no OIS in any of the main cameras and that would have come in handy, especially since its biggest rival does exactly that. A bigger ultrawide sensor would be welcome as well.
Overall, the Find N2 Flip is a more than dependable camera smartphone as is tradition with OPPO smartphones.
VERDICT
It’s clear that competition is finally here – What was Samsung’s turf is now getting really good rivals in the clamshell style foldables format and the N2 Flip is a real contender, especially in Kenya.
The N2 Flip brings with it very solid performance, a compact and attractive design, a more than capable camera smartphone and great battery life. All these features of the N2 Flip take the fight to the industry leader while upstaging everyone else in the clamshell foldable market.
It is also relatively affordable as well.
PRICING AND AVAILABILITY
OPPO Find N2 Flip starts at Ksh 129,999 at select OPPO retail stores. There are financing and trade-in programs OPPO has put in place.
